


Jerky Girl

by Miss_M



Category: From Dusk Till Dawn (1996)
Genre: Bars and Pubs, F/M, Post-Canon, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-07-23 14:39:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16160924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_M/pseuds/Miss_M
Summary: “Let me guess: you’ve taken up vampire hunting, and you still want company.”





	Jerky Girl

**Author's Note:**

  * For [saturni_stellis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/saturni_stellis/gifts).



> This is an extra treat! 
> 
> I own nothing.

Situated some fifty miles south of El Rey, _Tejas_ had one thing and one thing only in common with the long-gone _Titty Twister_ : it was a bar in Mexico. In _Tejas_ , the waitress wore short shorts and kept her chest covered in public, fights were tolerated but not encouraged, and while furnished with cheap booze, mostly-fresh sawdust, and lots of flypaper strips, the place was distinctly lacking in vampires.

Seth liked it that way. He liked having the youthful María José López to do the cooking and tend bar, her dewy daughter María Fernanda working the tables, and her other, married daughter Remedios, pretty as a painted saint, coming in twice a month to do the bar’s books. He liked not having to get up early or clean blood off the floor more than once or twice a week, and only having to worry about the new beer supplier trying to cheat him because he hadn’t heard of Seth’s reputation yet.

It was easy.

He was _bored_.

Seth would never admit as much, not to his customers, not to the tradespeople, not to the three women who looked after his needs, not even to himself. But there his boredom sat, unmoving, like a dead rat in the wall. 

Like a vampire sipping him through a straw, making him last. 

“Boss, you have a visitor,” María Fernanda informed him one night, while he was having a smoke out back, leaving María José to work the bar and mock-argue with the regulars. Seth didn’t have her gift for easy banter, and his flirtation technique tended to unsettle the locals. 

Practically no one knew where he lived. The visitor couldn’t have been Carlos, judging by the arch way María Fernanda had spoken, which didn’t leave many alternatives. Just one, in fact. 

She was older. Must be twenty-one now, as lean as before, but tougher, tanned by wind and dust rather than tanning beds. Jerky girl. Biker boots, black jeans, obvious holster under her leather jacket. Silver crosses dangling from her neck and left ear. 

Seth slid onto the barstool beside Kate, down at the end of the bar with a clear sightline to the door, while the patrons and the Marías watched them like a new telenovela. “How’d you find me?” Seth said in lieu of a hello.

“Found Carlos. He wouldn’t take any money for the information. Said you’ve been marinating here for too long, and he was happy to help you get the kick in the pants you need.” Her voice still had the little cowgirl lilt he remembered, at odds with her butch appearance.

“Yeah? Remind me to punch him just south of the moustache next time I see him.”

Kate smiled. “He said you’d say that. He also said he really would have his guys riddle you with holes this time.”

Seth leaned his forearms on the bar. They sat close enough to touch at thigh, hip, and elbow, yet kept some space between them. What united them also kept them apart. 

“Let me guess,” Seth said. “You’ve taken up vampire hunting, and you still want company.”

Kate’s attitude slipped as she twisted in her seat to stare at him – that wide, guileless gaze – her knee bumping Seth’s. “How…?”

Seth cut her off. “Your desperado look leads me to conclude you’re on leave from bible college, nobody sane comes here for vacation, and nobody even half sane would come looking for me for any other reason. Now that you’re here, indulge me in this one thing: explain to me how you square your new hobby with the man upstairs. Huh? Because I’m really fucking curious, Kate.”

She shrugged, mirroring Seth’s pose, both skinny arms on the bar, just one shoulder lifting, like she practiced it in a mirror. “He doesn’t get to have input.”

Seth grinned. “Still a preacher’s daughter at heart. Couldn’t even lapse imaginatively. Pissed off at God ‘cause your family died, huh?”

“And you’re not?” Kate fired back.

“Oh, I’m pissed off, alright. Just not at God. I never had much time for him.”

Kate turned earnest. “We can’t fix the world, but there’s plenty of vampires walking it. I have a trunk full of stakes and holy water outside, and let me tell you, killing them while they sleep is a cakewalk after fighting them off at night.” Seth gave her a look. “What? You already figured out the _Titty Twister_ wasn’t the only lair.” 

“Well look at you, saying that like a grownup. Just your lip still wobbles when you say ‘titty’.”

Kate shifted in her seat, like a kid getting mad at being asked if she needed to go potty. “Can you knock it off, please? Look, I get it. Your brother was an asshole, then you had to kill him before he killed all of us. It sucked for everyone. I know, I was there, I did it too for my brother. I also know you understand why I’m doing this, so can you stop acting like I need protecting from you when there are worse things out there, and make up your goddamned mind?”

Seth kept very still. He used to get like that while sighting down the barrel of his gun at some idiot intent on causing him a problem.

Kate kept her eyes trained on his face. “If you need to hit me, hit me. I’m right about Richie, but you can do it anyway, if it’ll make you get off your ass and _come on already_.”

“I don’t hit little girls.” He hadn’t yet made up his mind whether he’d break that rule just for her.

“Yeah,” Kate said. “You’re a bastard, not a fucking bastard.”

The smile they shared almost didn’t feel strained at all. She was right about one thing: they were two of a kind, like it or not. Reborn and baptized in the blood of the lousiest shithole bar on either side of the border. That didn’t exactly make Seth care about her, not with anything like the intensity with which he’d used to care about Richie and only Richie, but it was something. 

What separated them from the rest of humanity also united them with each other.

Kate leaned back on her barstool and shrugged off her leather jacket. The track marks on her bare arms told Seth everything he needed to know even before she spoke.

“I could tell you I’m not a little girl anymore, but that would be bragging. I could say killing vampires is the only thing that helps, but that’s not strictly true. You ever get that way after a robbery, Seth? All wired up, can’t get drunk or high or fucked out fast enough?” Kate held his gaze, looking less tough and brave than wrung-out and all alone, like she’d looked that cool dawn in the desert. “Sometimes I don’t even clean the blood from under my fingernails before I...”

She kept watching him while she folded her jacket neatly and laid it down on the bar. Then she laid her hand on Seth’s arm. Seth kept his ink covered for the customers’ sake – he ran a quiet joint, and they saw enough tattooed assholes in the street. His cotton shirt was thin, and the light press of Kate’s hand shook him like he’d been tased. 

Seth didn’t lack for female company, but Mexican hookers with serious skills and the entire López family had nothing on Jerky Girl. 

He experienced a vision he was pretty sure did not come from God: backlit like the Madonna in Mexican churches, there was Kate on her hands and knees, saying _harder harder you asshole_. Kate shooting up snow-white oblivion. Kate too drunk to stand but not too drunk to wonder – to know – what her father would say. Kate covered in blood and guts, still standing, a survivor in the dawn light. Kate’s small tits being squeezed, and she gasping and bucking, fucking herself, the cross in her ear swinging hypnotically, _that’s it that’s it you fucker_...

“Seth,” her soft voice sobering like a quick punch, “don’t make me beg. I want a partner to keep doing this. And you...” 

She looked around his shitty bar, the regulars whose names never stuck, the women who’d do a better job of running the place without the gringo owner underfoot. 

“Hell, Seth, you _need_ a partner.” 

Seth stood, smoothly slipping Kate’s grasp, and leaned across the bar, came up with a bottle of scotch and two glasses. If they were gonna toast this joint enterprise that would inevitably result in disaster of one kind or another, then they’d drink American fire water, like real desperados. 

“I’m not promising to shoot you if you get bit,” Seth said, pouring their shots.

“That’s okay,” Kate replied. “I know you’ll do the right thing.”

Seth barked a laugh. People looked over at him laughing. “How far away is the nearest lair?” 

He clinked his glass against the one still sitting on the bar, knocked it back without waiting for Kate to drink or to answer his question. She’d keep up. Hell, she looked ready to give him a run for his money.

Seth could hardly wait.


End file.
